


The Actor's Ruse: In which our hero learns of the importance of a good grounding in physical chemistry and proves his loyalty to the French cause

by nahco3



Category: Football RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, Spies, physical chemistry, shoddy victorian history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are concerns," Wenger says, "that this…delicate agreement could be disrupted by the Prussian ambassador."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Actor's Ruse: In which our hero learns of the importance of a good grounding in physical chemistry and proves his loyalty to the French cause

It's a miserable night – the sleet turning the streets into mud. Very cold mud. Freddie grimaces as he steps out the stage door, his cheeks still warm from the heat of stage lights and stuffiness of his dressing room. He turns up the collar of his great coat against the weather and wishes, not for the first time, that in his vanity he didn't demand that his barber shave his thinning hair. It does make it easier for him to wear wigs, when he chooses to, and makes his features all the more striking when he chooses to go without, but it's still fucking freezing. 

He walks quickly in the direction of better-lit streets. The stage door opens on to little more than an alley, the only light from the few back windows of the bars and tenements that line the street. The weather's done something to lift the fog that's persisted for the past few night, but world is still murky and dark. 

When he gets to the cobbled street at the end of the alley, the gaslights shine with their own halos, their light pressing out against the water in the air. Freddie leans against a lamppost. It's a risk – in the circle of light, he's an easier target for pickpockets, but he doesn't fancy walking any further in this weather, and if the ambassador wants to see him, he can pay the cab fare. Or send a goddamn carriage. 

He doesn't see anything more threatening than a few limping beggars and an absurdly drunk young man. Freddie idly considers picking his pocket, just to see if he still could, but before he can move to follow the man, a hansom pulls up in front of him.

"Where to?" the cabbie asks.

"The French embassy," Freddie tells him, pulling himself inside and shutting the door. The windows leak and the leather seat is wet, Freddie curls his nose and arranges himself so that his trousers won't get soaked.

The man makes a grunting noise and the cab lurches to a start. Only then does Freddie pull out his pocket watch, gold and crystal, one diamond set in its face, shaped like the moon. It's twenty past ten – by the time they're across the Thames and at the embassy, he'll be late. He sighs heavily and snaps the watch shut, replaces it in his vest pocket. 

When they do arrive, the embassy is lit up like a chandelier. Light streams out into the street and the two liveried footmen are still opening the door to admit the late-comers. Ladies and gentlemen in silk, their own footmen holding ivory-handled umbrellas over their heads as they take the few short steps to the door.

The cabbie turns and gives Freddie a speculative look. 

"Don't be an idiot; take me to the back entrance," Freddie says.

"Forgot your pearls at home, did you?" the cabbie says, laughing to himself. Freddie rolls his eyes and the cabbie continues down the drive, pulling up at the kitchen door. Freddie opens the door and steps down into the mud, pulling a few shillings from his coin purse. The sleet's turning into wet snow, and Freddie's glad the kitchen door is unlocked when he tries the handle.

The kitchen is dark and smoky, lit by candles, not whale oil, and Freddie's tired from three performances in one day. He pulls off his coat, shaking the melting snow off of the collar, and nearly jumps out of his skin when someone says his name.

"Have a seat," Ambassador Wenger says. The ambassador is sitting in a rickety chair by the stove, dressed in his finest, his coat resting carefully over the back of the chair.

Freddie sits opposite him, stretching out to warm his feet, spreading his legs.

"What's the job?" Freddie asks.

"You're aware of the treaty on Baltic fishing rights." Freddie shrugs; some of the broadsheets have mentioned it in the past few weeks, and the Parliamentary clerks in one of the coffeehouses he visits have been complaining about it for twice as long. He's also heard about some of the more tense negotiations surrounding naval build-up through, well, less official channels. 

"The signing is in two days," Wenger continues, "and the English have been perhaps not quite as pig-headed as they might have been. Some of the language is even almost elegant. This could be something of a success for us." The ambassador pauses, and Freddie waits. There's going to be something else, though.

"There are concerns," Wenger says, "that this…delicate agreement could be disrupted by the Prussian ambassador."

Freddie manages to keep himself from laughing. He's never met Mad Jens, but he's certainly heard enough about him. He's a third cousin of the king, and supposedly after Lehmann blew up half a wing of his summer palace trying to isolate phosphorous, his royal highness shipped him off to England in desperation, figuring that if nothing else, he could blow up an English stately home instead. As a diplomat he's useless, but his staff isn't totally incompetent. 

"So you're worried Lehmann will come into the signing room, piss in a corner and offend the delicate sensibilities of the young queen?"

Wenger gives the tight sigh of a man who has considered these possibilities. "I need three days. Keep him occupied in his house." Freddie opens his mouth to speak and Wenger holds his hand up. "I don't care to know how you plan to do it. Just do." He reaches into his coat pocket and tosses Freddie a wallet, fat with bills and coins. "For your expenses."

"Always a pleasure, ambassador," Freddie says, and sees himself out.

\--

Freddie surveys the Prussian ambassador's – Lehmanns's – town house in the morning light. It's brick, bright and clean, very large, nice windows. Freddie makes sure his lapels are lying flat, carefully adjusts his vest. He used the first of Wenger's purse that morning to buy clothes from the nicer set of second hand shops. A few years out of fashion, but well cut, made from good cloth. They fit his character of the student, perhaps a second or a third son, sent to university in England by wealthy parents abroad. 

He walks up to the door and knocks. A footman answers. Freddie presents his card and mentions he's a student who's fascinated by Lehmann's recent treatise on ways to avoid isomerism in molecular synthesis. He's sent to wait in the drawing room. As soon as the door shuts behind him he surveys the room. It reveals nothing particularly interesting, but then, drawing rooms rarely do. A few more technical books than might be fashionable, but the usual mediocre and heroic pictures from the motherland, fresh flowers, gilt mirrors. The room smells faintly of sulfur. 

Freddie makes himself comfortable with a volume of Dalton's _New System of Chemical Philosophy,_ wishing he had taken another cup of coffee this morning. 

Thankfully, Lehmann comes bursting into the room before Dalton can lull Freddie to sleep. Freddie surveys the man from under his lashes – no need to be subtle, after all. He's tall, more muscular than Freddie expected in a gentleman scientist. He doesn't wear a wig to hide his thinning hair, a soft brown with gentle waves. He's wearing an expensive silken vest over a fine linen shirt, but shirt itself looks singed and acid-stained. 

Freddie rises, and offers his hand to Lehmann with the closest he can approximate to breathless awe. 

"Ambassador, it's such a pleasure to meet you," he says, with a lingering handshake. Lehmann's hands are large and very warm, he has a few calluses – on the palms of his hands for riding, on the inside of his right middle finger from where his pen must sit. There are tiny white scares on the backs of his knuckles, like splatter marks. Freddie is sorry to release him.

"Karl Fredrik Ljungberg," Lehmann says, giving him a long look. Freddie supposes other people might find it unsettling – Lehmann's eyes are perhaps a little wild, yet still strangely intent for all that – but Freddie meets his gaze calmly, quirking his eyebrow. This, he can work with this. 

"I suppose," Lehmann says, "you would like to see my laboratory." 

"If you would be so good as to show me, yes," Freddie says, "I am very curious about how you constructed your condensing tubes particularly, do you have them made for you? How do you set up the apparatus?" 

Freddie never went to university; he came to England when he was fourteen, with only the clothes on his back and his quick fingers. But he would not have survived long on the street, or indeed now in Mr. Wenger's employ, or in the theater, if he did not posses a certain mental alacrity. He doubts he can pose as an expert for long, but earnest curiosity, wide eyes and a smiling pink mouth can accomplish a great deal, he has found. 

Lehmann looks momentarily surprised, and then he laughs quietly, as if to himself, running a hand through his curls and mussing them even further. 

"Of course he's actually curious about the chemistry," Lehmann says, in German. Then, in English: "Follow me and I will be happy to show you." 

Lehmann's laboratory is in the back of the house, on the ground floor. It is a wide, well-lit room, with bookshelves along one wall, a sturdy desk in the corner. Under the windows, long wooden tables covered with glass apparatuses sit. Each glass bulb is connected to the other by a series of glass tubes, emptying into various beakers, supported by iron rings. Under some of the tubes, little flames heat the liquid to boiling. It smells of a hundred different chemicals, some fruity and sweet, some vile. Freddie breathes through his mouth.

They spend some time looking at condensing tubes. Apparently Lehmann has them custom-made, at God only knows what coast, in Prussia in a variety of sizes and diameters, depending on the characteristics of the compounds he is isolating. Freddie only finds the conversation bearable since he can watch Lehmann's undo clasps and close valves with surprising delicacy, appreciate the tight cut of his sleeves against his arms and his trousers against his thighs. Really, Freddie considers, Wenger has given him much more unpleasant assignments. 

When a footman comes in to announce that tea is ready, they are engaged in a lively debate about improving the efficiency of the combustion engine; luckily Freddie had spent a few miserable months in Liverpool seducing an engineer's lonely daughter, meticulously copying her father's notes, encrypting them, and forwarding them to Wenger, so he knows of that he speaks. He's also managed to learn that Lehmann abhors the opera, the theater and fashionable company in general; Freddie's identity is safe, then.

They take tea together in one of Lehmann's smaller parlors. The footman comes in again to announce that a representative of the English Foreign Office has come to call and would like to speak to the ambassador about total fleet tonnage. At that moment, Freddie licks a bit of icing off of his finger, pursing his lips and sucking just for a moment, then letting his tongue dart out to lick his lips afterward. Lehmann's face goes gratifyingly blank for a moment, and he waves the servant off. Freddie knows it won't be long now, and anticipation curls tight in his stomach.

He is not wrong. They finish tea and Freddie rises, carefully brushing crumbs off his lap. He wonders how unsubtle he will have to be.

"I have a treatise on gas theory that might interest you," Lehmann says, "come along to my study and I can give it to you?"

Freddie smiles up at him, predatory. "Nothing would interest me more."

Freddie ends up sitting on Lehmann's desk, his necktie and shirt collar undone, his legs wrapped around Lehmann's waist as he hurries to unbutton and push aside Lehmann's clothing. Lehmann's hands are as skillful as Freddie hoped, his mouth as intoxicating. All in all, it goes rather well, Freddie thinks, though they do make something of a mess of his papers.

"I assume you will be staying for supper, Mr. Ljungberg," Lehmann says. Freddie laughs, breathless and worn out, his sweaty skin cooling and making him stick to the desk a bit uncomfortably, although he's still unwilling to move.

"Your grasp of social niceties is astounding, Ambassador," he says. "And you may call me Freddie, if you wish." 

Lehmann smirks. "If you think such liberties are proper, then you should call me by my Christian name as well, Freddie."

"We have already taken quite a few improper liberties today," Freddie says, "what are a few more? It would be my pleasure."

Jens ends up pushing Freddie against the wall and thoroughly wrecking his shirt before they make it to the dining room for supper.

\--

They spend the next day in the lab and in Jens' extremely comfortable feather bed. Freddie commends himself for his loyalty to the French and their causes as he stretches, catlike, still somewhat sore from yesterday, in the mussed sheets. 

Jens reaches over and pushes him back down into the covers, kisses him. "I have to go to the booksellers."

"Don't bother," Freddie says, between kisses. "The books aren’t going anywhere."

"Sadly, these might be," Jens says, "if that blasted Kahn gets to then first. There's a new book out on the properties of carbon that most interests me, and a few others I should look at for my research."

"If you insist," Freddie says, flashing a smile. "But you should know I think you perhaps consider spending the day studying anatomy instead."

Jens laughs. "Stay where you are," he mutters into the skin of Freddie's neck. "I'll be back soon."

Freddie shivers and reaches up to tangle his hands in Jens' hair. "Promise?"

"Yes," Jens says, biting Freddie's collarbone and then rising. He dresses himself quickly, not bothering with formal clothes – lose pants, a shirt and vest and a jacket over top. Freddie smiles as he watches, for an ambassador, Jens is charmingly ignorant (or more likely uninterested) in any kind of social convention. Jens catches Freddie's gaze and winks at him absurdly; it makes Freddie laugh. Jens crosses the room to kiss Freddie, for long enough that Freddie whimpers a little and leans back against the pillows, spreads his legs. Then Jens stands up, wipes his lips with the back of his hands. "See you soon," he says, leaving Freddie to lie in the sheets by himself, frustrated.

To pass the time, he reads more of the cursed Dalton, and as the light fades, he puts the book aside, too comfortable to stand up and light the lamps. 

He must have dozed off at some point, since he awakes to Jens, lighting the lamps. Freddie rubs his eyes and sits up in bed.

"Did you find what you needed at the booksellers?" Freddie asks.

Jens looks over at him. His hair is even more mussed than usual, as though he had been running his hands through it repeatedly. "I suppose so," Jens says, gesturing to a pile of books and a newspaper on the table next to him. "I stopped at a coffeehouse for a while as well, I don't suppose you missed me."

Freddie doesn't like his tone, the bitter undercurrent of it. "Of course I did," he says, rising from the bed and moving to Jens' side, running his hands along his chest and undoing his vest. He smiles up at Jens, open and sleepy, trying to put some of the uncomplicated happiness in his chest into Jens' as well. "You brood too much," he mutters, standing on his toes to kiss Jens. Jens sighs into his mouth, pushing Freddie back towards the bed. 

"That is the problem with being a scientist," Jens tells Freddie, stripping off his shirt. "You are forced to see things as they truly are." 

"The curse of genius," Freddie says, teasingly, pulling at Jen's trousers. "Let me see if I can turn your thoughts elsewhere."

"You know you can," Jens says, pushing him down into the mattress and kissing him fiercely, and they spoke no more for some time.

\--

Freddie sleeps again in Jen's broad bed, pressed warm against his side. When he wakes, Jens was already gone, probably downstairs for breakfast. Freddie dresses quickly and headed down as well.

Jens is in the breakfast room, eating a piece of toast. He looks up when Freddie comes in, and sets his shoulders, like a man preparing himself for some great difficulty. 

"The signing of the treaty is this morning, you know," Jens says, taking a sip of his tea.

Freddie feels a flash of panic - Jens is right, but he has also never mentioned his work as an ambassador to Freddie before. Perhaps he's just being absent-minded, but, looking at him, Freddie doubts it. But this is not Freddie's first assignment, so he says, "What treaty?"

"Wenger's fishing rights treaty," Jens says. "I knew you were too good to be true that first day. I should have trusted my instincts." 

Freddie looks up and meets his eyes. "What do you mean?" 

Jens reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cut-out article from a newspaper. Freddie comes over to stand beside him. He wants to rest his hand on Jens' taut shoulders, smooth the lines of his brow. Instead he bends to read the extract; it carries yesterday's date.

It's an article about him – well, about "Freddie Ljungberg, Swedish star of the stage" – and how he's been missing for the past several days. Apparently people rioted and demanded their tickets to _Beggar's Opera_ back, which is flattering of course, but not the immediate concern. Freddie looks up when he is done reading and meets Jens' eyes.

"I saw it when I was buying books yesterday. The shopkeeper mentioned that he – that you frequented a coffeehouse not far from there, one that the parliamentary clerks visit. I asked around, and opinion seemed divided on whether you were back up north stealing secrets or if Wenger had given you a job tailing some poor bastard in London."

"I told him I'd be hanged before I went back to Liverpool," Freddie says, after a moment. 

"I see," Jens says, meaninglessly. He looks at Freddie again, reaching his hand up and stroking Freddie's cheekbone with his thumb. Freddie turns into the contact despite himself. "I'm a fool," Jens says, "you must think I'm the easiest mark you have ever made. Even after I found out I still – well. I have not acted admirably, but I suppose that was your intention."

Freddie shakes his head, ready to interrupt, his chest aching at the knowledge of what he has done, is doing, to this man.

"I promise I won't take up any more of your valuable time," Jens continues, "since I doubt I could pay at the rate Wenger does, anyway." He removes his hand from Freddie's face, turns back to his breakfast. "You can go."

"Don't be an idiot," Freddie says. "He told me to distract you. I could just have easily dumped laudanum in your tea and spent the past three days fleecing all your servants at cards and pretending you were gravely ill. You cannot suppose that I take every brilliant chemist, or even every wealthy ambassador, I meet, into my bed."

"Oh," Jens says. He puts his hands down on the table top and then lifts them up, running them through his hair again and then scrubbing one over his face. The corners of his lips are creeping upward, and it makes Freddie want to laugh, makes him want to see Jens' manic grin. "So."

"I have no intention of giving up my work for you or any man," Freddie says, "but you should let your cousin know that my rates are quite reasonable, especially if he does not want to send me to Liverpool."

"For the kind of work you are proposing," Jens says slowly, "you really should have some sort of official apartment. Perhaps even an office of your own." 

"Yes," Freddie agrees, giving him a cautious smile. "I believe that would be appropriate."

"Very well then," Jens says, reaching his hand back out running his broad thumb over Freddie's knuckles. "I will see what I can do."

"How splendid," Freddie says, and leans in to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> this is obviously completely historically accurate. 
> 
> thanks to acchikocchi for beta reading.


End file.
